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The Noir Factory investigates mystery, pulp, noir, and true crime with the eye of a hard-boiled detective. Everything from Al Capone, Humphrey Bogart, Sherlock Holmes, to Mickey Spillane and Alcatraz. Nothing escapes us when the game is afoot!.
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The Noir Factory Podcast is created for the mystery reader, noir movie goer, or true crime buff who wants a closer look into the genre. Mystery writer Steven Gomez looks at crime history, pulp stories, noir films, and the men and woman who made them. Every other week we will examine an event or figure in crime history, a pulp or noir writer, or a piece of detective work, both fictional and in real life. If you have an interest in crime of any kind, THIS is the podcast for you!

52 episodes available.
A new episode about every
18 days
averaging 22 mins duration
.

The Noir Factory Podcast Case #37 Huey Long-The King Fish “One of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government. And they aren’t going to like it.” -Huey Long Huey Pierce Long Jr. was born to Huey Pierce Long Senior and Caledonia Tison Long on August 30th, 1893 in Winnfield, Louisiana. Winnfield was a dirt-poor parish and ...…

Noir Factory BEST OF 2017 There’s a tradition in the podcasting world that during the first week of a new year you look back at the episodes you’ve put out in the world. I know, if it’s a podcasting tradition how old can it be, right? Still, just like drinking too much on New Year’s Eve and stepping on the scale after the holidays, we look at o ...…

Hero Obscura Episode #48 Santa Clause Today’s hero isn’t obscure. Not in the least. In fact, he’s known by all. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. And how dreary a world it would be if he didn’t. Old Saint Nick. Father Christmas. Kris Kringle. Santa Clause. Today on Hero Obscura. ----------------- If you haven’t d ...…

Noir Factory Interrogation #4 Dmitri Matheny- Noir Jazz ------------------------------------ Crime Jazz: “The Femme Fatal. The cop on the beat. The hard-boiled detective. The saxophone under the street lamp in the fog. It’s the music of “Chinatown” and “Taxi Driver.” -Dmitri Matheny Find Dmitri’s work at www.dmitrimatheny.com If you haven’t don ...…

Noir Factory Podcast Case #35 Sexton Blake-Pulp Detective “If there is a wrong to be righted, an evil to be redressed, or a rescue of the weak and suffering from the powerful, our hearty assistance can be readily obtained. We do nothing for hire here; we would cheerfully undertake to perform without a fee or a reward. But when your clients are ...…

Noir Factory Podcast Interrogation #3 Will Viharo: Gonzo Pulp Writer Will Viharo is the author of the Vic Valentine series as well as the host of Seattle's Noir at the Bar, a seasonal showcase that combines author readings with alcohol, the way God intneded it. He is a writer that defies classification, with his work mixing humor, surrealism, g ...…

Noir Factory Podcast Case #34 Joseph Weil: The Yellow Kid “Who's going to believe a con artist? Everyone if she's good.” -Andy Griffith Joseph Weil was born in Chicago in 1875 to Mr. and Mrs. Otto Weil. The couple owned a small neighborhood grocery store and made a decent income. Their boy, Joseph, helped out after school by sweeping up and sto ...…

Case #33: The Black Sox I'm forever blowing ballgames, pretty ballgames in the air. I come from Chi, I hardly try, just go to bat and fade and die. Fortune's coming my way, that's why I don't care. I'm forever blowing ballgames, and the gamblers treat us fair. -Ring Lardner You could say that it started with Charlie Comiskey, because a lot of t ...…

Noir Factory Case #32 Alan Ladd and Box 13 “I'm the most insecure guy in Hollywood. If you had it good all your life, you figure it can't ever be bad, but when you've had it bad, you wonder how long a thing like this will last.” -Alan Ladd Alan Walbridge Ladd was born on September 3rd, 1913 in Hot Springs, Arkansas and was the only child of Ina ...…

NFL SuperPro For a hero to fail, a lot of things has to happen. It has to be poorly thought out, ill conceived, and have little in terms of redeeming quality. Oh, and it should be created with ulterior motives. Sounds pretty harsh? Then you just haven't met NFL SuperPro.

Space Cabbie! Everyone has a hero. For cop's it's probably the Dark Knight and for soldiers I can imagine Captain America, depending on the army your in. But what about the ordinary guys? What about the accountants and pastry chefs or the mail carriers and DMV workers? Fishermen, okay...we'll give you Aquaman. But for the Lyft and Uber drivers ...…

The Blue Diamond Some heroes are with us for ages and other are gone in the blink of an eye. If you are in the business of being a hero, particularly a super one, you never know how long you'll have. You just have to make sure that you use our time wisely. That and you should punch a lot of Nazis.

“He's clearly a man with a mission, but it's not one of vengeance. Bruce is not after personal revenge ... He's much bigger than that; he's much more noble than that. He wants the world to be a better place, where a young Bruce Wayne would not be a victim ... In a way, he's out to make himself unnecessary. Batman is a hero who wishes he didn't ...…

“Behind me, Billie was on her last song. I picked up the refrain, humming a few bars. Her voice sounded different to me now. Beneath the layers of hurt, beneath the ragged laughter, I heard a willingness to endure. Endure- and make music that wasn't there before.” -Barack Obama The woman who would be Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in Ph ...…

"He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong." -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby George Remus was born on November 13th 1876 in Germany to Frank an ...…

Eddie Muller is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation. According to their website, the Film Noir Foundation is a non-profit public benefit corporation created as an educational resource regarding the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir as an original American cinematic movement. Eddie is also the host of ...…

“Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over." -Charles Ponzi Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tobaldo Ponzi was bor ...…

Noir Factory Podcast Episode #27 In 1996 a board game called KILL DR. LUCKY came out. It was a wildly fun game where each person takes turns trying to, well...kill Dr. Lucky. Don't judge me. It was a simpler time. The game required each player to take a turn at doing in the Rasputin-like physician, which was sooo much more difficult than it sou ...…

Case#01.5: Kate Warne-America's First Female Detective REVISITED Hi Steve Gomez here. A lot has happened behind the scenes at the Noir Factory during the last month or so. Our offices in the Sierra Foothills have moved lock, stock, and barrel up to the Pacific Northwest. Way up to the icy clutches of the Pacific Northwest. Past Seattle and into ...…

Noir Factory Interrogation #1 Dan Slater-Author Dan Slater’s novel Wolf Boys had been banned from prison by the Texas State Department of Corrections. That is a shame because there is much there for the inmates, as well the public, to learn. Dan Slater is a former legal reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has written for The New York Times ...…

Noir Factory Podcast Case #026: Victor Lustig-Con Man Extraordinaire “I’ve always loved movies about con men. I think con men are as American as apple pie.” -Bill Paxton, actor Victor Lustig was born on January 4th, 1890. Maybe. He said, more than once, that he came from the Austria-Hungarian town of Hostinné, in what is now the Czech Republic. ...…

“Whether in a white dinner jacket or in a trench coat and a snap-brim fedora, he became a new and timely symbol of the post-Pearl Harbor American: tough but compassionate, skeptical yet idealistic, betrayed yet ready to believe again, and above all, a potentially deadly opponent.” -Ann M. Sperber, author A lot of what we do here at the Noir Fac ...…

“...My husband pointed out that kids frequently have an instinctive desire to follow the good example rather than the bad, once they find out which is which. We agreed that a good moral background and thorough grounding in the Hardy Boys would always tell in the long run.” -Shirley Jackson, author They are still in print today and they are stil ...…

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #23- The Real Life Inspiration for Professor Moriarty. “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the c ...…

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #22-The Inspiration Behind Sherlock Holmes “Science gave us forensics. Law gave us crime.” -Mokokoma Mokhonoana, author Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887 to mild reception. The story, A Study in Scarlet, introduced the Holmes character to the world. An eccentric investigator with an e ...…

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #21: The Shadow- Pulp Hero “The world of Doc Savage and The Shadow was one of absolute values, where what was good was never in the slightest doubt and where what was evil inevitably suffered some fitting punishment.” -Alan Moore, writer The Shadow first cast his presence over the airwaves on July 31st of 1930. It was ...…

"My agent told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England-I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.” -Ida Lupino There are certain family names in Hollywood make you sit up and take notice. Today those names are the Fonda and the Bridge ...…

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #19: The Kray Twins “They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world...and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable.” -Ronnie Kray, from his autobiography The East End of London during the sixti ...…

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #18: The Cotton Club-Nightclub “It was infamously racially exclusive. W.C. Handy wished to go one evening to the Cotton Club and he was turned away. And he could hear his music being performed!" -Levering Lewis, historian It was the greatest nightclub of its day and there's a convincing argument to be made that it was ...…

NOIR FACTORY PODCAST CASE #17: Raymond Chandler-Writer “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitabilit ...…

“A pulp story without a detective and, obviously, somebody for him to do battle with is unthinkable, and I can't remember reading a pulp story that didn't have a dame - either a good girl or a bad girl.” -Otto Penzler The 1890’s in Europe was, for all intents and purposes, a golden age for serialized stories in print. In England Charles Dickens ...…

“It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.” –Willie Sutton-Bank Robber William Francis “Willie” Sutton Jr. was born on June 30th, 1901 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a poor tenement neighborhood known at the time as Irishtown. He was the son of a blacksmith and the fourth of five children. His mother was a devout Irish Cathol ...…

Even as a boy Eliot Paul Ness seemed destined for excellence and if you asked his fellow students, probably seemed most likely to be a crime fighter. He was the youngest of six siblings born to Peter and Emma Ness, a Norwegian immigrant couple that operated a small bakery in Chicago. Eliot Ness was a bookish young man and a good student, with a ...…

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was born inWilliamsburg, Brooklyn, to a family of poor Jewish immigrants, whocame from Eastern Europe. His parents, Max and Jennie, workedwhatever jobs they could find to provide for their five children,and their neighborhood constantly invented new definitions for theword “Poor.” Asa child, the second of five, Benjamin ...…

The name evokes visions of a dancer, slithering through a smoke-filled parlor, wisps of cloth snaking over her as she moves. Her eyes are like polished opals in the moonlight, dark, mysterious, and you can’t bring yourself to look away. You dare not look away. Okay it probably didn’t play out exactly that way, but I imagine that is how she woul ...…

He was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma in 1900, seven years before the territory became a state. His grandparents, all four of them, were pioneers of the territory. His father, Gilbert was a minister and a printer. In fact Gilbert Gould was everything a small town in a harsh territory needed him to be, but mostly he was a man who believed in good stor ...…

Letter to Henry Ford on April 10, 1934…. Dear Sir, While I still have breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car make. I have driven Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever other car skinned and even if my business hasn’t been strictly legal it don’t hurt anyt ...…

Agatha Christie was the bestselling author of all time, and living in the days of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, that means something. In literature, it goes the bible, Shakespeare, and Christie. In short, she is what legends in mystery writing aspire to be. But it wasn’t always like that for her. When you look at Agatha Christie’s story, is he ...…

Sitting about a mile and a half off San Francisco in the middle of a bitter, inhospitable California bay, Alcatraz Island is a lot like many other pieces of bay area real estate. Many have claimed ownership and many court battles were waged over ownership. But unlike other prime pieces of San Francisco real estate, few have wanted to call it ho ...…

The Great Santa Claus Bank Robbery-An APB on Old Saint Nick! As a crispness fills the air and the scent of gingerbread begins to waft from the kitchen, one only has to pull on an ugly sweater and curl up with a tablet to find some old-fashioned, weird Christmas crime. And as always, Texas is as good a place to start as any. In 1929 banks in Tex ...…

CHAPTER FOUR It took me a while to catch up with Mike McCarthy. He was the Special Investigator for the District Attorney, which meant that he played catcher to all the screwballs that came across the court system. If a crime was reported or investigated, he knew about it. The only variable was that not all of the crimes in the city were report ...…

Christmas time is special at the Noir Factory. The snow cleans up the chalk outlines on the sidewalk outside and the fellons wear a snappy smile as they lift your wallet. Today is part one of a holiday bonus for the Factory. It's a holiday caper designed to lift the spirits and take a break from real life. If it isn't your thing, and you are he ...…

It’s hard to tell where exactly the story begins because there was no huge discovery. At the tips of your fingers there are marks. Loops and swirls, whorls and arches. It was kind of like telling the world that you were the first to discover ...your belly button. It just didn’t go over well, but unlike your bellybutton, the patterns on the tips ...…

In the 30's, the FBI used the term “Public Enemy Number One” as a designation of infamy. Although that period in time became known as the “Public Enemy Era,” there were only three people actually held that designation. The first one wore the title like a crown. John Herbert Dillinger was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 22nd, 1903. His fat ...…

The partnership between mankind and canine is one of the oldest and most successful relationships on Earth. Every since early man sat around a fire and tossed scraps of meat to a curious gray wolf, the relationship between the two was based on trust. Virtually all breeds of dogs stem from the gray wolf and they have been tied to mankind ever si ...…

Life changed quickly for the people of Norfolk County, England in the 1800’s. The large estates were falling. The families of privilege, who employed large households full of servants, often for life, grew more scarce by the day. John and Maria Bowles could see the writing on the walls, so to speak. Their way of life, their means of support, wa ...…

He was born on March 9, 1918 in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Elizabeth, NJ, in a neighborhood he called “grimy, industrial, and working class.” It was exactly the kind of neighborhood you would expect a tough-guy to grow up in. Mickey Spillane was christened Frank Morrison Spillane by his Protestant mom, Catherine Ann. Apparently his Cathol ...…

FOR A BETTER VERSION OF THIS EPISODE, SEE CASE #01.5: Kate Warne- America's First Female Detective REVISITED When the door opened at the Pinkerton Detective Agency on August 23rd, 1856, Allan Pinkerton, the legendary chief of the most famous detective shop in history, had no idea what lay ahead of him. She was, as Allan later described her, “A ...…

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